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My ranking of every Shakespeare play

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Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#131

Post by timgilbert »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #128
rcxdude wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it can be both: clearly the feud is idiotic, but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. it's tragic through the interaction of multiple reasonable and unreasonable elements in all the characters.

>but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today, probably the best examples (where the couple still feels like they have anything to do with each other more intimate than running a household) would be Claudius and Gertrude and Macbeth and his wife, neither of whi…

I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today

I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean that he mostly thought of love as childish infatuation, you can see him exploring quite a variety of other types of love in the sonnets.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#132

Post by hilbert42 »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #54

As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the amb…

"As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me,…"

What age was that? I reckon most kids think Shakespeare is difficult at the beginning because of the language, and that brings me back to a point made in the article:

"For me, Richard II is the most dull of the Henriad plays."

I now think so too, but when I was studying the play it was the first one I'd encountered with a solid story to it, so it encouraged me to figure out the language so I could follow the plot by myself.

I was introduced to Shakespeare at age 12 and in that year we studied two plays, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream and I was bored with both. The language wasn't difficult as our teacher explained everything well but I didn't find the stories interesting, they were a bit of a yawn really.

As I said that changed with Richard II and by then I was 14. Being older helped to understand nuances in the script but that was only part of it, the play simply had more substance to it which made it more interesting and worthy of study. Moreover, by then we had to first read the text without the teacher's help which would only come afterwards in class discussions.

Thus Richard II was the first play where Shakespeare actually made sense to me, it too was the first one where the language made sense without the teacher having to 'translate' every paragraph.

Putting Richard II behind me as an enjoyable experience rather than drudgery was important as it made me prepared for the great plays like Lear. That appreciation may not have happened if the order of introduction to the plays had been different.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#133

Post by cage433 »

bazoom42 wrote: post #37
munchler wrote: post #33

> Romeo and Juliet ... A beautiful play, but I just don’t connect with its romantic core. Anyone who has children understands that this play is 100% a tragedy and is in no way romantic. Two teenage idiots think they're in love and end up killing themselves stupidly to prove it. The adults are also doofuses. The play itself is brilliant, but horrifying.

They are in love. This is what makes it such a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet are not idiots, they are clearly the most sensible persons in the play. And it is anachronisic to call them teenagers, since the idea of “teenage” as a stage between childhood and adulthood is a 20th century innovation. In the universe of the play, they are adults and of marrying age. Apparently some teachers try to teach the play as a warning a…

Nah - I think they're daft kids and Shakespeare is showing us that. The play begins with Romeo utterly in love with Rosaline - what's that for if not to show us not to take his feelings for Juliet too seriously

And Juliet's 13 - which was very young for marriage even at that time. Certainly not what would have been considered 'adult' then

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#134

Post by bazoom42 »

cage433 wrote: post #133
bazoom42 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are in love. This is what makes it such a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet are not idiots, they are clearly the most sensible persons in the play. And it is anachronisic to call them teenagers, since the idea of “teenage” as a stage between childhood and adulthood is a 20th century innovation. In the universe of the play, they are adults and of marrying age. Apparently some teachers try to teach the play as a warning a…

Nah - I think they're daft kids and Shakespeare is showing us that. The play begins with Romeo utterly in love with Rosaline - what's that for if not to show us not to take his feelings for Juliet too seriously And Juliet's 13 - which was very young for marriage even at that time. Certainly not what would have been considered 'adult' then

> The play begins with Romeo utterly in love with Rosaline - what's that for if not to show us not to take his feelings for Juliet too seriously

Rosaline is a nun and therefore pure and unattainable. Shakespeare is lampooning the genre of “courtly love” where the poet is longing but the love never consummated. Romeos “heavy lightness”-poem is a satire of this genre.

This is contrasted with the love for Juliet which is real and physical. Notice how Romeos poetry becomes a lot better when he meets Juliet.

The complaints that Romeo and Juliets love is “not real” (because of physical desire and sex) is really an echo of the ideals of courtly love, which Shakespeare ridicules.

> And Juliet's 13 - which was very young for marriage even at that time. Certainly not what would have been considered 'adult' then

This is specifically adressed in the play. Juliet is consideret of appropriate age for marriage, and is already being set up with Paris before she meets Romeo.

Of course she is just a child by modern standards, but that is irrelevant for understanding a 400-year old play.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#135

Post by baud147258 »

bombcar wrote: post #79
adamgordonbell wrote: post #54

As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the amb…

Shakespeare has such influence that’s it’s almost more correct to say he wrote English than that he wrote in English.

or maybe the English he wrote was subsenquently imposed as the standard English throughout the UK...

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#136

Post by bazoom42 »

timgilbert wrote: post #131
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today, probably the best examples (where the couple still feels like they have anything to do with each other more intimate than running a household) would be Claudius and Gertrude and Macbeth and his wife, neither of whi…

I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean that he mostly thought of love as childish infatuation, you can see him exploring quite a variety of other types of love in the sonnets.

The love of Romeo and Juliet is certainly more mature than say Othello and Desdemona, or Hamlet and Ophelia, or Antony and Cleopatra. So I think “childish” is coming from prejudice, not from the play itself.

Btw the age of Romeo is never stated. Juliet is very young, but her parents are consistently depicted as much more childish and immature.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#137

Post by arethuza »

mjmsmith wrote: post #110
wiredfool wrote: post #95

I've read about half of them, seen more than a bunch live and in film, enough to annoy the kids. Some versions I like: * David Tenant's Much Ado about Nothing. Kenneth Branagh's is good too, and easier to find. * Branagh's Henry V. * I actually like Mel Gibson's Hamlet. * Almost any Midsummer's Night Dream. It's just a fun play, even kids can enjoy it. * The Coen Bros' Macbeth on AppleTV * Rosencrantx and Guildenster…

I'm sure it's considered problematic now for various reasons (maybe it always was), but Polanski's Macbeth still holds up for me. Jon Finch (Macbeth) and Terence Bayler (Macduff) were great.

Polanski's Macbeth was the one we were shown in school - probably around 1980 or so.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#138

Post by tialaramex »

bloak wrote: post #123
MrJohz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, I think a lot of that is him writing in a vernacular English that wouldn't have been recorded much in official documents or other writings. So he probably didn't coin it so much as save it for posterity. Otherwise his plays would have been like those fantasy novels whether the author gets slightly too excited about using their made up words for everything.

I agree. There are plenty of words for which the earliest surviving example of it being used is in a work attributed to Shakespeare, but there is no reason to believe that Shakespeare was the first to use any of those words. People don't generally use a new word for the first time in a play or a poem, but published plays and poems is all we have by Shakespeare. The first use of a new word tends to be in conversation…

Some (many?) words attributed to Shakespeare follow the ordinary processes for making new words in certain open categories in English, and so you could argue that anybody might make these words as a competent English user, grasping for this specific meaning, has available the tools to make this word for that meaning. This could happen completely independently, even many times. If you need "invulnerable" or "majestic" for example you don't require the services of some specialist word inventor to come up with them, you can just make those yourself since you're a competent user and there are rules.

But Shakespeare used them in a context which people remembered, so that's why it matters, and in the process Shakespeare gets to choose some parameters for these words which are not set by the rules such as their emotional valence - is this a good thing or a bad thing? The rules usually don't dictate that, but usage does and Shakespeare can set the trend.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#139

Post by denton-scratch »

As a kid, I saw the Peter Brook production of AMND at Stratford. It bowled me over. I never saw another Shakespeare production so powerful.

I was privileged to go to a school that did regular Shakespeare productions (with kids acting all parts, and doing stuff like lighting). The head of English was a good stage director. They did Lear, Henry IV 1&2, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Merchant, 12th Night.

I must say, I've never found a screen production of Shakespeare as gripping as these stage productions featuring my own schoolmates.

Doing Shakespeare readings in class is absolutely the wrong way to do it. It just kills it; no wonder so many kids these days hate Shakespeare.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#140

Post by geokon »

baud147258 wrote: post #135
bombcar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shakespeare has such influence that’s it’s almost more correct to say he wrote English than that he wrote in English.

or maybe the English he wrote was subsenquently imposed as the standard English throughout the UK...

I learned that this is actually a bit of a coincidence. English started to in effect be standardized by the publishing of the first English dictionaries shortly after Shakespeare (esp standardizing spelling - which even in Shakespeare is a bit all over the place)

Not totally sure how much that plays into it. Would be curious to hear from someone that knows more

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